Marc Palmer

Today has been very difficult. We said goodbye to Tricia Anderson at her funeral at a lovely woodland burial ground. It was an incredibly moving occasion for all those present, I doubt that I will ever be at the funeral of a more loved and globally-respected person.

Tricia was an independent midwife of international renown, and we were lucky enough to have her as our midwife for the birth of Amy our first born. We had a wonderful natural birth in a birthpool in the sitting room of our small Victorian terraced house, opposite the railway station with traffic humming past, although it was a Sunday morning so we didn’t notice. She was so incredibly warm and comforting, we could not help but trust her completely. She was so humble that at the time we had no idea how important she was to the midwifery community in the UK and internationally, let alone an accomplished singer, poet, artist and public speaker and campaigner.

She was someone who made a real difference to the world, and quietly but tirelessly worked to improve the lot of women, babies and families worldwide. When we met her we began to realise the tragedy of the loss of birthing and breastfeeding knowledge from all our families since the increasing medicalization of birth in the last few decades. Some people now are two or even three generations away from a true natural birth in the family, so how can we expect new families to see that there is so much wrong with birth as it is experienced now? There are so many aspects of modern hospitalized birth that defeat the natural physiological processes of birth, resulting in increased interventions. This excellent Tricia quote sums it up:

Let us bring them into harsh rooms with bright lights. Let us make them lie on their backs on hard narrow beds. Let us tether them to machines so they cannot move. Let us make them stay silent and make no noise with their pain. Let us expose their most private parts and threaten them with cold steel. Let us make them push their babies upwards, against the pull of the earth…In these conditions, labour swiftly becomes unbearable and pain relief becomes a woman’s only hope… This is not the natural cry of a woman in labour bringing a child to birth, although if you have only ever witnessed childbirth in a medicalized setting you might be forgiven for thinking so. This is the screaming plea of a tethered animal in pain. [Source: http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/2007/08/pushed.html]

I can only hope that the work of the many midwives in the UK to prevent the idiotic demolition of the independent midwifery services by the UK government succeeds. If it doesn’t, this will be a tragedy that is hard to comprehend.

Tricia was a rare person – charming and witty but never flippant, spiritual and "alternative" but  grounded in the real world. Her working method was rigorous but happily acknowledged that sometimes things work even when it doesn’t seem like there is the science to back it up.

Tricia elsewhere on the web:
http://www.saveindependentmidwifery.org/images/stories/pdfs/practising-midwife-feb-07.pdf
http://birthinangus.org.uk/index/news-app/story.23/title.-10-steps-pioneer (see links from there)

All I can say is, if you’re about to have or are planning to have a baby – get the facts - read some natural birth books. This isn’t hippy stuff, its the actual physical process that is intended by nature, that current methods fight against.  Personally I always thought that going to hospital was for when something was wrong with you. Since when was birth a problem to be solved?

…but this is where the really tough part about birth comes in. There’s life at stake. Fear and litigious tendencies make us feel risk-averse and with this mindset natural birth can seem like you are not doing the best for your child. The trouble is that this is assuming you know the risks of an un-natural hospital birth. I bet you don’t. Ask questions, then ask more questions. Then do what feels instinctively right. It’s a journey to be travelled, but it is a wonderful one.

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